So Taken

So have you heard about all those WalMart closures? Well, one’s in my town. We found out immediately after they announced it on the news. Now it’s not a full blown supercenter. It’s one of those WalMart Hometown Express Marketplace whatevers. If you’re not familiar, it’s basically a gas station, with a pharmacy, and the store is just the grocery side of a regular WalMart. Throw in some office supplies, candles and hair dye, and yeah that’s it. I live in a town with only one stop light. It’s on a mountain, everyone’s related to everyone (except me,) and their favorite pastime is placing new No Tresspassing signs on every corner of their property. If WalMart said “Yeah we gotta close some stores” it makes sense we’re one.

Still sucks. There’s not a lot of choice here without driving 30 minutes to the closest townlike-town. The mayor of here said in the local paper “There’s nothing at WalMart you can’t already buy in our town at one of our other businesses who’ve served our community for years.” So… the Dollar Store? We have a Dollar Store and a Hardees and one of those local mom and pop ‘Earl’s Food Rodeo’ places. You know… like when you go to grandma’s and she has that run down family grocery store nearby with NOTHING exciting in it, and the meat quality is questionable? Yeah. That. And Hardees food, which I can’t stand.. and the aforementioned Dollar Store. And not even a good Dollar Store (oxymoron.) It’s the kind where nothing is a dollar and every aisle is a mess.

Thanks mayor.
Remember back when I bought my kids ducklings for Easter pets, mayor? I know you do. You live on our street and gave us a citation, then the next week held a private town counsel banning “flocks of pets” from being legal in our town. D-bag..

It’s already surreal seeing a WalMart close. And I’ve gone almost every night since Friday waiting for deals. Now it’s up to 25% off everything. 5lb bag of M&M’s? YES PLEASE. My dog’s never had Oinky’s Brand Pig Ears… SHE WILL NOW. Post-Valentine’s Day markdowns on Valentine’s Day candy… PRE-Valentine’s Day?? NEVER TOO EARLY TO STOCK UP FOR HALLOWEEN.

Few things I noticed: WalMArt pretty much booted all the staff. Cut off all the self checkouts, and had one singular register open. So essentially one employee. And the other staff they replaced with one security guard manually opening and closing the front doors for customers. In observing what went first involving the markdowns, fresh meats, milk and bread were a given, easily expiring the soonest. After that, the first thing to completely sell out? Lunchables. First they came for the lunchables…

The number one thing that didn’t sell jack? Juices. The juice shelf was fully stocked. Little boxed juices to the giant Ocean Spray and Hawaiian Punch jugs. No one wants juice. I bought two boxes of Capri Sun for my kids because I felt bad for them. I literally felt bad for juice.

So now if I want to go to WalMart, the next closest ones are 20 minutes away in opposite directions. Both of them… ALSO closing.

Looks to me like last panel is her walking away from him quite deliberately. Unless HE’s also a plant that D52 set to try to get her to “put her heart into it a little more” or something I’m not seeing how it’d be a successful neg.

Depends on what you mean by “successful” If you mean her eventually going out with him, probably not. If you mean his comment got under her skin and will cause her to doubt herself and her self worth, that’s a different thing altogether.

I think “it’s just human nature” is a hasty generalization. I know I’ve had instances where I favored rejection over acceptance – I’m sure we all have. In this case, I’d say it’s just vanity – Ellie is being rejected, in spite of her appearance (which, she is aware, is pretty good).

But I would also suggest a part of her frustration at being rejected here is BECAUSE she hates this “job”. She hates the soul-crushing aspects of it – working for someone you despise, having to give up her own time, the fact that she’s basically lying to her customers – but, while she’d rather stay home and play board games than go on a fake date, even a fake date isn’t a terrible way to spend your time. Being rejected (and consequently having one thing that makes her job bearable denied) would certainly be frustrating.

It’s like, I hate my day job (pretty much for all the reasons listed above) but sometimes I have interesting projects. When those projects get taken over by nitwits, and devolve into repetition and busy-work, my morale plummets and I spend a lot more time reading comics on my phone and posting comments on them instead of working.

I’ll agree that rejection can occasionally be favorable compared to acceptance. However, I suspect her reaction is due to hurt pride (as you mentioned), but the other part is probably that she’s feeling that sitting through a meal and/or activity with him would probably be more bearable, and maybe even enjoyable, compared to the others she’s had to put up with this past week.

Yeah, I kind of agree with the double down here. She totally doesn’t like the rejection from a job that she doesn’t like. I wonder what kind of riot act she’d read ol’ Blind Guy if he was within ear shot.

As for the closing Wal-Marts in your area…that does suck. I live in the country and the closest Wal-Mart is now about 15 miles away. City life has been slowly inching its way out towards where I live. It’s one of those Walmart Marketplaces, which is basically a grocery store. Not as bad as the Wal-Mart Express, but still, not a Supercenter or even a regular Wal-Mart. To get to one of those, I have to drive 20-25 miles either east or west to get to one. We go to the closer one on Sundays because it’s on the way home from church (sorta). We call it the Zoo because that’s the way the people act there. Animals…customers and a lot of the staff. We prefer to go the the other one, but it is actually out of the way. It’s nice and clean and everyone is nice there…but like I said, out of the way (45 miles give or take from church). I hate going out after I get back home on Sunday, after all, that’s a day to relax, so they say. Anyway, I know your pain with the closings. 20 years ago, we actually had a Wal-Mart that was only 10 miles away but it closed when they opened the Supercenter in town. We got over it, but still, it sucked for a long time…now it’s just life as usual.

Nice of Wal-Mart to come into the area, put everyone else out of business, and then pack up shop. Having a sister who works at Sam’s, I so detest they way they treat their employees that I refuse to shop at Wally World unless there are simply no other solutions. Hopefully there are some entrepreneurially-minded citizens in your town who can start-up a grocery store or some such. I can’t imagine having to buy all my food from a place as questionable as Wal-Mart, much like making a long haul to one for such purpose. :(

This is why I refuse to shop at WalMart. I also have an unrealistic demand for buying American made products whenever possible, so I get double spanked on prices.
Sometimes it’s impossible, mind you. I don’t think there’s a place in the entire country that makes a flat screen.

For me, all the stories I’ve heard about WalMart’s aggressive cost cutting (I’ve heard some products they’ve told manufacturers they’re fine with less QC if they can get a better price so you get more failures for the same products at WalMart compared to other places), their tendency towards Chinese products, and the Chinese apparent fondness for putting lead in way more products than I see a reason for (I think I remember hearing of two or three recalls on baby teething toys from China due to lead…) make me 100% unwilling to ever buy something I’m going to consume at a WalMart. I tend to avoid them in general if I have an option, too.

Yeah. It’s not just the baby toys that makes me question the so called truth of having a competent manufacturer in China not putting crap into the supposed product. Look at their milk recalls and other food stuffs that have been exported.

Out side of the possibility that contaminated food transport bags might be responsible for some of the dog food killing doogs.

I wonder if Sam Walton is spinning in his grave with how Wal-Mart is run these days. When he first established Wal-Mart he launched a determined effort to market American-made products. Included in the effort was a willingness to find American manufacturers who could supply merchandise for the entire Wal-Mart chain at a price low enough to meet the foreign competition. There is a lot of hoopla about Wal-Mart trying to buy more “made in America” stuff over the next decade but once you eliminate the 56% of their sales that come from groceries, only about 25% of the remainder comes from America. A pretty substantial part of that 25% comes from their “health & wellness” products so the vast majority of the clothing, household goods, and electronics is imported. Not exactly how ol’ Sam Walton tried to run his business when he was on this side of the grass…

I actually saw Sam Walton at a Walmart in a middle-of-nowhere Montana, shaking the manager’s hand, thanking the cashiers and generally making everyone go “Wow.. what a neat old guy! Walmart is awesome!”

Then he passed away, his kids took over the business and got rid of all that unprofitable nonsense.. like products with a “Made in America” sticker actually being made here and not China, ethical treatment of employees, making sure their livestock supplier isn’t torturing the animals, etc. Nobody has time for all that when there’s votes to be bought.

I don’t care how much cheaper they are on some things, but I do care about quality, and things like not feeling partially responsible for slave labor in third-world countries.

Personally, I try not to purchase almost anything at squall mart. What sucks is their buying power in comparison to that of their competitors. But then, the morality of paying more at their competitor may be cheaper in costs of the soul rather than a savings of the pocket book.

Now that you mention it, I’ve noticed a decline in quality at Wal-Mart. I’ve heard, but cannot confirm, that some major suppliers have a different model that they produce and sell exclusively to Wal-Mart. Those Wal-Mart-only models have been produced with either fewer features or lower quality than the models sold elsewhere. That lower quality is their only way of meeting Wal-Mart’s aggressive demands for lower prices. It would certainly explain why stuff I buy there seems to be lower quality than if I buy the same brand elsewhere. They seem to have degenerated into a very large version of the good ‘ol “Family Dollar” or Big Lots stores that sell bargain priced goods by getting the lowest quality available or buying up overstock and residual goods from stores going out of business.It’s tough to find anything high-quality in WalyWorld.
I also prefer not to subsidize the PRC when they are engaging in economic warfare against the USA and Europe and I find it difficult to find much there that isn’t labeled “Made in China”.

Problem is, because like over us over in the UK, all the Buy-N-Large Corps have sucked all the local area dry of resources, killed off all the local small shops and made themselves so integral with employment and other areas that the locals now cant live without them.

“This is true. But you’re also like going to a theme park with a broken leg. You can see all sorts of amazing, exciting rides with the most impressive curves around; but you know you’re not getting on a single one.”

Let’s think about that accessory for a moment. Would you be a little cautious to flirt (or worse) with a young lass at The Kilted Kilt, knowing that they carried a dagger on their uniform that would turn you from tenor to soprano with the flick of a wrist?

While this may be legal in Scotland, Wales and England but in Ireland and Southern Florida…. not so much.

I would be twenty times more inclined to go into a restaurant with skimpily clad waitresses if I knew all the waitresses were armed (though if with guns instead of knives, all booths would also need to be bulletproof, and they should provide the adaptive shooting muffs at each booth so you can easily hear people talking).

My reasoning is that at that point, I’d know the clientele would generally behave and the women would walk around KNOWING they didn’t have to worry.

I would like to compare and contrast between Star Wars “Episode VIII” and the X-Files season 10 opener “My Struggle.”

Chris Carter did the “Veni, vidi, visa,” thing. But instead of visa, he kicked ass. The level of quality was consistent throughout. Where the schadenfruede may have upped the time frame for retaliations for removing chess pieces no longer needed, it could also reflect a statement of how much technology has shrank the world to a point that is even smaller than the ride at Disney World.

Ep. VIII, was a let down. I wanted the energy that was shown from the get go in Ep. IV. What with the lasers and such. The best way to describe that is to go and watch “That 70s Show” for when Red goes to the movies to see it. He got drawn into it from the first blast. Ep. VIII was just cookie cutter almost everything.

My Struggle, while some may argue that the set characters were brought back, there was new tensions that have developed through the interim. And no, I will not say anything. Because when I met the CSM at my campus, he wouldn’t say anything. It’s because for a show and story like this, you can’t give any spoilers. It has to be witnessed. That’s almost what the X-Files were made for, to be an accomplice in order to give the viewer a first hand view in being complicit with the so called crimes against the schadenfruede, and as such, may face reprisals at any point in time.

As for strip clubs, I went to one in college when I was best man in a friend’s wedding thinking about bachelor party sort of ideas. Looking around at the other guys there just made me sad. One of the girls working there said that some guys would regularly come in every week and blow their paycheck. I realized long before I left that, though I’m certainly fond of attractive women wearing little-to-nothing, strip clubs aren’t a place I enjoy. I’ve only been to one other one since, and that was from an exhibitionist friend who had decided to work at one for the summer trying to get everyone to come and see her (I sat with a group of people I mainly knew and ignored the rest of the patrons, so it wasn’t as upsetting, though it did break a three year record of managing to avoid seeing that friend wearing less clothes than is considered proper, which had actually taken some effort).

As far as I know, aside from odd regional differences (like McDonalds having lobster rolls in the Boston area and I think rice & spam in Hawaii), chain restaurants tend to have the same food from the same distributor with the same prep instructions. So aside from a local bad cook, they tend to be fairly similar.

Also I mean I’ve ALWAYS heard any Hooters referenced as having bad food. I’ve never heard anyone seriously say anything good about the food at any of their locations.

I can confirm the rice and spam in Hawaiian McDonalds. Other local McOddities are Saimin, taro pie, haupia pie, and Portuguese sausage. Despite having all the ingredients, they don’t serve loco moco. Which is sad.

Looks like Ellie’s about to have one of those “you don’t get to reject me!” moments. As far as Walmart is concerned and as a former WalMart employee, we knew this was coming for a while. This is the logical conclusion to the “fight for $15” mess. Stores in areas that generate large amounts of profit will stay open. Stores in areas that generate moderate or low profits will become “streamlined” as in Marketplaces and Expresses. Stores in areas that break even or run at a loss will be shut down. I just find it pretty hilarious that it’s right after the State of the Union address where the president talked about how our economy was growing. And then the number one employer in the world announced they were laying people off.

I just googled “wal mart closings” and checked the authoritative list.
I am honestly surprised that one of the stores near me did not get the axe.
Looking at the listings, I see a bunch of world cities, so maybe they’re consolidating markets. Closing one of the two in some spots.

Huh. I wonder if I should demand a refund on my most recent Rand McNally road atlas. Suddenly, much of its data is obsolete.
Or, I could go through with a black magic marker, and cross out the closed locations. Not that I was ever likely to visit any of them deliberately, anyway.

All the more reason to keep their hands in their own pockets. It was bad enough that they branched out into grocery from retail. It is sort of impressive that some towns where they put a pharmacy in the store that most of the original pharmacy’s still exist. Not like one can get crutches at an Arkansas store.

I work for an employer that does try to have decent benefits. The health plan I had for, I think 2013-2015, required any prescription refills go through CVS. My parents had one that required they use RiteAid at one point, too.

So, even though it wasn’t the most convenient for me, I had to use it to get covered. From what I’ve gathered with the radio commercials, I think a decent number of the supplemental Medicare plans get tied to things like that too.

Another thing I noticed through that time was a 90 day refill that was ~$120 that I belatedly noticed I could’ve gotten at the pharmacy at Kroger’s (a Cincinnati-based grocery chain) for $10 even without insurance. So CVS was definitely lining their pockets with that plan, even if the Kroger deal was partially a “get you in the door” sort of thing.

So I can easily see how pharmacy chains that may have been able to make those sorts of deals could stay in business even with a WalMart pharmacy right next door.

One of my pharmacists told me that many small time pharmacies have banded together via their suppliers in order to get the bulk ordering discounts. And that some of the prescription providers have backed particular distribution businesses.

Keep the atlas. Walmert may just buy google, yahoo and all the other data centric providers and charge 1.00 a mile for the first ren miles with 0.10 a foot afterwards. With 0.25 a turn of three degrees change or more.

I’m half expecting Ellie to turn around and give the guy a liece of her mind and insist he take her on a date….or lose her shit about another person outside what she defined as who she would go out with.

I’m waiting for the guy to come and make the doughnuts so I can leave them out for a week before I mail them.

I don’t understand it. We’ve got plenty of stores that truck them in. Gas stations too. But that national chain felt we needed an outlet and bought the only place in town out that does 80% of their offerings from scratch. I’ve seen the buckets for the filling, sooo..

I haven’t been able to get the cheese-itz because I got a good oil change coupon. The only problem, its for a Walmert procrastinate neighborhood merket with the oil change bays next to the deep fryers in the deli. I’ve been here for five days now, and they just announced a plan to streamline their merchandising stratigiem through simplification of their marketing stratification from a horizontal geographically based distribution of customer satisfaction to a vertically challenged parlay of customer centrilization on a district basis with a paridigm shift towards the primary metropolitan markets.

Then ghey said that they needed to find towns with five or more interstate exchanges per political edifice.

“…like when you go to grandma’s and she has that run down family grocery store nearby with NOTHING exciting in it…”

Ah, sit down and I’ll tell you a tale only spoken of in myth and whispered upon the four winds….

…the very kind of run down grocery store that you speak of – ALSO near my Grandma’s – once held a wonder the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 80’s (this would have been around the mid-to-late 90’s). As a man who collects toys, you can imagine I was also once a boy who did the same. This run down “grocery” store was hilariously out of touch and out of date…but also when concerning the toys! Awaiting me, on the shelf – with a “new” sticker on it and then a “clearance” sticker over that and covered in dust – was a HISS III tank from G.I. Joe. I’ll grant you, it was originally from ’89, so it’s not completely out of the question to find that in the mid-90’s, but if you’re at all familiar with regular not-ancient-and-out-of-the-way stores, you know there’s no way you’d find a late 80’s toy on the shelves in the mid 90’s.

Now, I realize this isn’t the most amazing story for anyone thinking of toys as a waste of the oil used to make the plastic, but keep in mind I was still a kid then, and that made the find all the sweeter, because…ya know, nobody cares if some old dude finds an old toy, but OH MAN is it magical for a kid! Especially since I had seen that tank on a little fold-out sheet of G.I. Joe stuff that a friend gave me, but it was all 80’s stuff that I thought I would never get to see.

…and then that magical mom ‘n pop shop never yielded anything interesting ever again and was closed the next time I saw it.

It sometimes works as a pre-meal, swimming-pool-in-your-tummy-for-your-food-to-dive-into thing. Or a social thing. Often when I am cooking for guests, we will crack open some beers while I cook (some of it may make it into the food, and not even by accident sometimes).

About the Walmart: I doubt anyone will replace the Walmart Express. As bad as they treat their employees, they usually run as cheap as they can which means that it didn’t make much sense for them to run the store.

That, or he knows how this will play out. I dated a 19 year old for a little less than a week. The age difference seemed too much, but we decided to give it a try. It turned out we lived in entirely different worlds.

I neglected to mention in my last message that I was 31 at the time. My point is, you’re not in the same place in your life at those two ages. I suppose with the right people, it could work, but statistically, it doesn’t. People grow as they age and the concerns of late teens and early twenties become annoying and needless.

Yeah, I remember realizing that when I was 23 considering asking out a 19 year old undergrad. I’d enjoyed what I’d done as an undergrad when I was an undergrad, but I didn’t really have any interest in partaking again, but I absolutely thought she should do so and not be pulled away to miss it.

I’d consider him more blunt and a “cards on the table” type than an asshole for this. I mean, he might be an asshole too, but this doesn’t strike me as him being an asshole so much as honest. I could accept his brother being an asshole setting up a date that he had no interest in like this, but him admitting it seems on the up & up to me.

If he’d told her he really wasn’t interested but would take her out for a meal if she wanted anyway and they could part ways on a full stomach, then I’d be hard pressed to find any objection to what he’s saying.

Not seeing an excess of assholery on his part. A bit blunt, but he showed up with every expectation of this being some sort of scam. And to be fair, it IS a scam. HE didn’t set up the account or respond to her messages, that’s on his brother. He’s just realistic on his chances with a 19 y.o. hottie who’s entire profile other than her picture and name is a lie.

If I didn’t think she was just going to keep walking away, I’d almost get the feeling Ellie would ask him to take out his cell phone to take a picture of her flipping off the camera to take back to his brother.

That private town council sounds like it violates the sunshine law. Plus its possible that by using “flocks” that he left ambiguous wiggle room for definition. Look for instances where people keep livestock for micro farming.

Alternate Text: Panel 1.Ellie: Well, I showed up for the date, it’s time for us to go to Red Lobster. Let’s go.Uninterested old guy: Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, PASS
Panel 2:Ellie: Wait – WHUT!?!Uninterested old guy in a T-Shirt: Look, full disclosure – my brother set up this account and responded to your messages.
Panel three:Uninterested old guy with grey hair and a brother: Since my Cyrano loving brother did all this with my name and face, I felt that I should set people right with the real thing. I wanted to show up and prove that your nose was worse than Steve Martin’s in “Roxanne.” Guess I owe him fifty bucks.
Panel four:Uninterested old guy with a four o’clock shadow: Look, I hate to tell you on top of all that, but I’m allergic to shellfish. Last time I walked into a Red Lobster, I went into an anaphylactic shock so severe, the paramedics said that they never saw a case as bad as mine before. And they both watched “My Girl.” No offense.Ellie: No offense.

What is Walmart thinking? They close stores in small towns that have almost no competition and yet where I am they fought for over a decade to put a Walmart across the street from the grocery store I work at when 5 to 10 mile in any direction could take you to another Walmart…

His town has something of a competition. Now he just needs a butcher shop that sources grass fed beef, pigs (not grass) and free range fowl from local suppliers who stick to humane reasons for not over stuffing them with feed and every antibiotic on the market.

They started doing it when a doctor had told someone in my family that the hormones in most commercial beef probably were not helping some condition or other (I don’t remember). So between my paternal grandparents and three of their four children they tried splitting half a cow from a nearby farmer that didn’t use any of that crap. They noticed that while it was a larger up-front cost, it was cheaper in the long run and better meat (even with sitting in freezer for 6+ months before all being used). So they kept at it until that guy got out of the business and they’ve lately been looking around for someone else (one they did this year completely lied to them and cheated them).

Waltons and Kroenke have been screwing America for years! This is just a small taste of their “pillage and run” process.
Old Sam would be spinning in his grave if he could see what his kids and in-laws have done to his vision.

I also live in a small town. I work at the nearest Wal-mart which is 30 minutes away in the next town over. So far, I haven’t heard anything about it closing…I’m really REALLY hoping it doesn’t because I’ve got a pretty good job there and finding a job around here is difficult. Not to mention, the next closest Wal-marts are about an hour away in the nearest cities. I may have a pretty good job now, but not good enough to afford to drive an hour to work every day at 3am to be there by 4.

I just noticed that their speech bubbles and shirts are pretty much matching colors. I then had to go back to earlier comics to see if every character’s speech bubble matched his or her shirt colors. :-/

I think long-term characters get assigned colored speech balloons and short-term characters get something unused in their comic that likely matches their color scheme somehow.

As an archive crawl reference, if you go to comic Nightmare Fuel (current post date April 13, 2014) and look in Rusche’s author post talking about what “the median” sisters did to Tarra, you’ll note that Ellie caused her speech bubble to change color.

I’ve seen this personally WAAAAY too many times and it’s always hilarious…from my end at least. ^-_-^

-Hot girl gets used to getting attention because she’s…well…hot.
-Suddenly the one guy who is all ‘meh’ on the subject who isn’t an 11 see’s her and says ‘meh’ TO HER FACE.
-Girl proceeds to flip out (either angrily or hysterically although to be fair one is funnier than the other).
-EX: Sometimes hot girl will follow said NOT-11 guy and berate him with everything that ends up sounding like “This is not how it’s supposed to work!”

I’ve got 3 Walmart supercenters within 5 miles of my house, and I don’t shop at any of them. I hate the panhandlers begging for $$ going to and coming out of the store and seeing picked through merchandise lying on the floor and scattered in the isles.

A word of warning about those pig ear treats for your dog. Make sure there made in the USA, if anywhere else throw it in the trash. The problem is salmonella.